page_title: Tower house
section_title: Europe
hierarchical_section_title: Tower house / Europe
caption_attribution_description: English: Panorama of San Gimignano, Province of Siena, Tuscany, Italy
context_page_description: A tower house is a particular type of stone structure, built for defensive purposes as well as habitation. Tower houses began to appear in the Middle Ages, especially in mountainous or limited access areas, in order to command and defend strategic points with reduced forces. At the same time, they were also used as an aristocrat's residence, around which a castle town was often constructed.
context_section_description: After their initial appearance in Ireland, Scotland, Basque Country and England during the High Middle Ages, tower houses were also built in other parts of western Europe, especially in parts of France and Italy. In Italian medieval communes, urban palazzi with a very tall tower were increasingly built by the local highly competitive patrician families as power centres during times of internal strife.  Most north Italian cities had a number of these by the end of the Middles Ages, but few now remain, with the fourteen secular  towers in the small city of San Gimignano in Tuscany now the best group to survive.
  Scotland has many fine examples of medieval tower houses, including Crathes Castle, Craigievar Castle and Castle Fraser, and in the unstable Scottish Marches along the border between England and Scotland the peel tower was the typical residence of the wealthy, with others being built by the government. In seventeenth century Scotland these castles became the pleasurable retreats of the upper-classes. While able to adopt a military nature, they were furnished for comfort and social interaction.
  Tower houses are very commonly found in northern Spain, especially in the Southern Basque Country, some of them dating back to the 8th century. They were mainly used as noble residences and were able to provide shelter against several enemies, starting with the Arabs and later Castile and Aragon. However, due to complex legal charters, few had boroughs attached to them, and that is why they are usually found standing alone in some strategic spot like a crossroad, rather than on a height. During the petty wars among the Basque nobles from 1379 to 1456, the upper floors (with defensive capacity) of most of them were demolished. Few have survived unscathed to the present day. Since then they have been used only as residences by their traditional noble owners (Saint Ignatius of Loyola was born in one of them, which stands to this day) or converted into farm houses.
  To the west of the Basque Country, in Cantabria and Asturias similar tower houses are found. Furthest west in the Iberian peninsula in Galicia, medieval tower houses are in the origin of many Modern Age pazos, noble residences as well as strongholds.
  A feature peculiar to Germany are the few preserved tower houses of Ratisbon, reminiscent of those in San Gimignano.
  In the Balkans, a distinctive type of tower house (kule) was built during the Ottoman occupation, developed in the 17th century by both Christians and Muslims in a period of decline of Ottoman authority and insecurity. The tower house served the purpose of protecting the extended family.
  In the Baltic states, the Teutonic Order and other crusaders erected fortified tower houses in the Middle Ages, locally known as "vassal castles", as a means of exercising control over the conquered areas. These tower houses were typically not intended to be used in any major military actions; for this purpose the crusaders relied on a number of larger order castles. A number of such tower houses still exist, well-preserved examples include Purtse, Vao and Kiiu castles in Estonia.
caption: Towers of San Gimignano in Tuscany, Italy.
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